CEO Spotlight

A Can-Do Attitude

A master strategist, Campbell Soup CEO Denise Morrison charted her own career course with precision. Now she is applying the same rigor to the company she leads. Chicken quinoa with poblano chiles, anyone?

"Let's put it this way," says Morrison, in a conference room back at Campbell's Camden, N.J., headquarters. "In my high school, women's sports were cheerleading and baton-twirling."

Morrison didn't make the cheerleading squad, although now she is Campbell's chief cheerleader, too. Instead, she practiced twirling until she not only made the baton team but became captain and twirled fire—a first for the school. "Today, I am still twirling fire," deadpans the immaculately coiffed, French-manicured CEO.

A master strategist, Morrison charted her own career with precision. Now she is applying the same rigor to Campbell.
Dave Moser

That would be an understatement, in view of the U.S.'s flagging appetite for soup. Campbell (ticker: CPB) has a dominant 34.6% share of the U.S. packaged-soup market, and generated roughly 35% of its fiscal 2012 revenue of $7.7 billion from sales of soup. (The fiscal year ended July 29.) But IBISWorld projects that total soup-industry revenue will decline in the next five years at an average annual rate of 0.5%, which could pose continued challenges for the 143-year-old company.

Campbell's sales, earnings per share, and stock price have been just about flat for the past three years, although the stock, at $36.25, is selling near a 52-week high. It fetches 14.3 times fiscal 2013 estimated earnings of $2.54 a share, a 15%-to-20% discount to the packaged-foods group, although a 3.2% dividend yield is comfort food for investors.

After eight years in preparatory roles at Campbell, Morrison became CEO in 2011, the 12th chief executive in Campbell's history and the first woman to hold the job. "We really are not in denial," she recently assured a group of analysts, in reference to the diminishing popularity of soup.

In a little more than a year at the helm, Morrison introduced 100 new products, including a line of flavorful hipster-inspired soups under the Campbell's Go soup brand, aimed at the heavily researched, 80 million millennial generation (born from 1978 to 1994). The company also hired a chief marketing officer, a rarity for a food company, to help it connect with this Internet-savvy cohort.

Then, several months ago, Campbell made its biggest-ever acquisition, buying Bakersfield, Calif.–based Bolthouse Farms, one of the nation's largest carrot producers and a seller of premium beverages, for $1.55 billion. A potential dance partner for Campbell's V8 juice line, the brand also pushes Campbell into high-margin refrigerated foods, a category growing by 6% to 7% a year. "Just growing soup is not sufficient," Morrison says. "We are so much more than that."

Campbell's other main units include Global Baking and Snacking, at 29% of revenue; non-U.S. meals and beverages (18%); U.S. beverages, led by V8 (10%); and North American Food Service (8%).

BARRON'S CAUGHT UP WITH MORRISON just after Hurricane Sandy savaged the East Coast. Bad weather turns people into soup buyers, so could this have been a somewhat twisted blessing? "It's possible," she says, letting the thought trail off, and adds that she hasn't seen the figures yet.

Later, another Campbell executive fills us in: The boss has zero tolerance for weather-related excuses. In the past, Campbell spent too much time focused on weather—say, blaming lackluster sales on warm winters. When the subject of weather comes up, Morrison has been known to snap, "Can we not go there?"

"Weather can't be controlled, and she doesn't want to hear about it," says Mark Alexander, president of Campbell's North American group.

When Morrison's town lost power in the storm, she moved into a hotel in Philadelphia. The family's failure to install a home generator, which she jokingly blames on her investment-banker husband, Tom, would seem a rare lack of forethought by an impeccable planner.

The eldest of the four Sullivan daughters growing up in the seaside town of Elberon, N.J., Morrison was considered the strategist of the clan. She persuaded her parents to allow her to attend college out of state—in this case, Boston College—paving the way for her sisters to do the same. When she wanted to get her ears pierced, she developed a scheme to join forces with her sister Maggie to write what she called a two-for-one "business plan." Bruce Springsteen's father, a local jeweler, did the job.

"Denise never left anything to chance," says her sister Maggie Wilderotter, chief executive of
Frontier Communications
(FTR), a wireline-telecommunications company in Stamford, Conn. "She's been very calculated about her route."

The girls' father, an AT&T executive, and mother, a real-estate agent, expected good grades, and Morrison, who loved school, didn't disappoint. A big outing for the family was a trip to the library on Saturday. The girls were expected to read a book every week and write or deliver a report. "My dad would say, 'You are so lucky, since you can learn everything in that book that it took the author years to write,' " Morrison says.

The girls also were expected to do daily chores listed on slips selected from a mayonnaise jar, and establish high goals for themselves. They were awakened at 6 a.m. to do Royal Canadian Air Force drills that their dad thought would benefit them. At the dinner table, he imbued them with a sense of excitement about business, and the possibilities it offered. All four sisters have had high-power careers.

BY THE TIME SHE GRADUATED FROM college magna cum laude in 1975, Morrison was set on leading a large company. Her first stop was
Procter & GamblePG -0.29270577215782695%Procter & Gamble Co.U.S.: NYSEUSD85.16
-0.25-0.29270577215782695%
/Date(1425420179190-0600)/
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
6029502AFTER HOURSUSD85.1685
0.008499999999997950.009981211836542978%
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
65789
P/E Ratio
24.92828288741877Market Cap
230650569823.645
Dividend Yield
3.023015500234852% Rev. per Employee
692110More quote details and news »PGinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(PG) in Boston, where she was hired as a paper-division sales representative. She took on extra assignments to distinguish herself, managed several teams, and was promoted twice. At many meetings she was the only woman present. But when her husband needed to move to New York, P&G offered her a lower-level position there. Instead, she took a comparable sales-management job at
PepsiCoPEP -0.6060606060606061%PepsiCo Inc.U.S.: NYSEUSD98.4
-0.6-0.6060606060606061%
/Date(1425420087093-0600)/
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
4135369AFTER HOURSUSD98.4098
0.009799999999998480.009959349593495936%
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
13113
P/E Ratio
22.843876958792805Market Cap
146754532836.914
Dividend Yield
2.66260162601626% Rev. per Employee
246063More quote details and news »PEPinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(PEP), in Purchase, N.Y.

Morrison was recruited to
Nestlénesn.vx -0.26737967914438504%Nestle S.A.Switzerland: SWX EuropeCHF74.6
-0.2-0.26737967914438504%
/Date(1425425496000-0600)/
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
5706240
P/E Ratio
16.49636149244952Market Cap
241215049841.309
Dividend Yield
2.9490616621983916% Rev. per Employee
270242More quote details and news »nesn.vxinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(NESN.Switzerland) in 1984, as director of sales planning for confections. There, she became even more serious about her career advancement. Besides diagraming her goals and initiatives for Goobers, Raisinets, and Laffy Taffy, she built a spreadsheet about herself. She recorded her time in each of her jobs, the budget she managed, the number of people she supervised, and her achievements. It helped her identify the experience she still needed, and those who could help her along the way.

Former Nestlé CEO Alan MacDonald was one of her early advocates, and gave her a cost-cutting assignment at a Sunbury, Ohio, coffee plant. Next she turned around a money-losing Carnation facility in Bakersfield, Calif. But when Nestlé asked her to move to Cleveland, Morrison said no. Her daughter was in high school, and it wasn't a good time to uproot her.

Morrison boldly requested a meeting with Doug Conant, then president of rival Nabisco. They met at a Palm Springs, Calif., coffee shop, and Conant offered her a job on the spot. Morrison went on to lead Nabisco's West-zone sales, and helped convert a sales organization based on geography into one based on customers. A year later she was promoted, with a move back to New Jersey.

BY NOW MORRISON COULD FILL in her chart with the several hundred people she was managing. Even so, Conant says, she told him, " 'I have the ability to do more.' I challenged her to raise her visibility outside the company."

Conant left Nabisco in 2001, after it was acquired by Kraft, to become CEO of Campbell. Unhappy with Kraft's slow decision-making, Morrison followed him to Campbell two years later, joining as chief customer officer. But she also secured a commitment that she would soon run a large division. In 2005, she was made president of Campbell USA. "She had been preparing herself for 20 years," Conant says.

But nothing really prepares you for the top spot. In the mid-2000s Campbell began reducing sodium levels in many of its products, including soups, to satisfy customer demand and appease critics. At the same time, competition was heating up, and Campbell's sales fell. As the chief operating officer poised to become CEO, Morrison was faced with a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't morass. In July 2011, she ordered higher sodium levels back into soups, while still retaining a line of reduced-sodium products. The lesson: "Health and wellness mean different things to different people," she says.

Pulling a colored card from a neat stack on her desk, Morrison fires off a list of product attributes that Campbell has found people mean by healthy: "low sodium, low cholesterol, anti-aging, immune-supporting, mental vitality, heart healthy, obesity-reducing."

"But it has to taste good," she adds.

IN A WORLD OF SHIFTING BRAND loyalty, the "changing culture of food" poses another challenge. By this phrase, Morrison means more than a simple migration to value. Campbell's research indicates that consumers are making food choices "to gain control over their lives" and find happiness, which suggests that every can of chicken-noodle soup might be doubling as a shrink. She also seeks to address what she deems the new American family, often multicultural and headed by a single parent. Tapping on yet another card, she states, "We put the consumer first in our leadership model."

Among her achievements as CEO, Morrison is most proud of Campbell's record number of innovations, including 30 new soups. The Go line offers a more adventurous take on familiar ingredients, with flavors such as Chicken & Quinoa with Poblano Chiles, and Golden Lentil with Madras Curry. "This was done with discipline and creativity," she says of the new products. "We are laying a foundation and have made some pretty bold moves."

Analysts expect Campbell's revenue and profits to grow only modestly in the next two years. But it would be a mistake to bet against Morrison. "I learned not to drop the baton at important moments," she says.